My Illustrative Life

My hair of the last month: a story of stories

Snip snip!

Grow, grow..

The ‘Lum-Sharon’ cut was so good until that mullety back-shag grew in! I cannot stand heavy neck hair. I will miss being a hornbag, though. Sharon is the strongest babe-magnet in that show!

Snip, snip, HACK HACK CUT SNIP trim trim

Only, without the padawan brain double-feature..

I’m kind of hoping it will grow back in with an entirely different texture. I have heard that that can happen.. haven’t you?

Note: choice of haircut does not necessarily reflect my choice of favoured character! In GITS:SAC It’s Batou (the Major is more of a ‘person who wouldn’t annoy me at all if I knew her in real life’ than a ‘favourite character’?), in Mai Otome (anime) Mashiro IS THE BEST. I really can’t choose a favourite in Kath & Kim.. they are all too funny.

Fathers Day!

Bikes in car, drive, park in layby, cycle, reach village.

You see, because I am a good and loving daughter, today I allowed my dad to menace and terrify me by exploring a village “Scarecrow Festival” together.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

The worst part is that these weren’t the worst part. Those Morris Dancers that go about covered in rags with their faces painted night-black and feathers on their hats? I don’t care how traditional they are, or that my beloved’s father occasionally partakes - these guys are FLIPPIN’ SCARY.

No pictures, because I am a big wussy.

X_X

I was in London last Friday to see the Ife bronzes at the British Museum - actually I was planning to see the Renaissance sketches with my Dad, but I’m a sucker for a good sculpture and African history is really interesting and awfully neglected.

But I don’t have any pictures from that (you’ll have to visit for yourself, or google! Of course). I have pictures from the train journey there! My sister and I played the ‘make a picture from a squiggle’ game. It’s fun! Here are some of mine, from her squiggles.

And my favourite: Poopin’ man!

Some of hers:

And here’s her with a shadow-boner, and me being Hilary Swank the Next Karate Kid.

I’M TIRED

CLASSROOM ASSISTANTING IS TIRING

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A nice thing about blog-reading is that you come across people who are really doing stuff. People who, no matter how long and hard they may have worked behind the entries, have an air about their writing that suggests that one day they just decided “I think I’ll make a shoe” or “I think I’ll move to a new country and handcraft leatherwear” or “I think I shall sail around the world, by myself”, and then they did. When my dad says to me “You could carve that piece of stone I have outside” on a day when I have nothing planned, having read those people Doing Stuff helps to mean that I think “well yes, of course I could”. And then, I do.

No better pictures than the above yet, I’m afraid, but I don’t reckon I did so bad for a first try. Relief more than sculpture, but I’ll build up. I did both sides, and I only hit myself a couple of times. It was good learning!

Yesterday my mum and my sister and I visited my Great Aunt, who lives a fair way away in (my ancestral) Coventry, and took her to Coombe Abbey. Coombe Abbey, if you haven’t been, is awesome.

I haven’t taken any pictures of one reason it was so awesome, because that is probably illegal - there were tons and tons of kids there. Loads. I know it’s half term and all, but it was a joy to see youngins running about yelling at ducks, enjoying forest pathways, climbing banks, shouting “I AM THE TALKING BUSH” and shaking branches from inside evergreens which branch from ground-level, walking dogs, and QUITE CLEARLY being on dates. Too cute. If you are ever thinking, “oh alas children do not like nature any more, only wii, how sad!”, you should go to Coombe Abbey (at half term).

It has buildings, and grounds (lots), and just about every type of country landscape you could ask for. There’s a pond at the front of (what I think is) the hotel that has a sort of aqueduct non-bridge pathway across it; on one side it’s nature free and wobbly and undergrowth, on the other it’s nurture - angular and groomed, statues in the water, box-shaped box hedges.

There are paths to follow in various directions, which managed to turn me completely around and take me by surprise. I thought I’d reached a new building, but it was the one we started at. Cunning! The whole place has a sense of mystery though, the way it’s lain out - there’s always something just visible through or past or behind what you’re looking at.

The grounds were really, really pretty. These don’t do them justice because I am not a good photographer (and the camera I was borrowing is kind of weird and colour-bleaching/non-focusable).

Coombe Abbey also contains the spookiest tree-bourne sculpture I have ever seen. The black dog in this picture was being called forcefully by its owners, but I was willing it to stay in the frame long enough for the darn picture to take..

Seriously, is that supposed to be.. what is that supposed to be??

What’s a day out without a fitting outfit? NOTHING, THAT is what!! In a moment of great serendipity, my super-fantastic dreamskirt from Modelle - via the NASTY GAL sale - arrived that morning..

I was sure I would be able to see my own foot through the trunk’s various holes if only I stretched far enough..

I couldn’t.

BONUS: Me totally failing to replicate the awesome height achieved by my first run-up, which my fool sister MISSED CURSE HER.

And with that, I’ll go back where I came from.

I made a mask.

Everything I’m wearing bar the boots is second hand or offbrand. And I think the tights are from Tesco?

Oh Grace Jones, you are so fabulous.

Some songs don’t need videos. Some songs render videos useless; they’re facile or shallow or just say everything they need to say within the audio alone. Sometimes videos are just poorly designed and mean a song that could have been enhanced by moving images have to stand alone and watchers of video channels get to be mildly (or strongly) visually bored for four minutes or so.

The above video is an example of seamless integration of eye and ear food. Audio-visual. If you take away the video from the song, you get maybe half the value. If you take away the audio, same. The whole really is more than the sum of the parts. It’s just magical. It’s a whole 80s dystopic movie in six minutes.

If you enjoy Grace Jones, please buy or rent Conan the Destroyer. She’s a secondary character but her arc is some strong heartwarming, her costume is fantastic and SHE IS JUST SO COOL.

pictures pinched off google image results

Criminal Minds is one of my favourite shows. I have to hide my face at the really nasty gore bits and I can’t watch more than one epiosde at a time or I have (weird) nightmares, but I think it’s well written and gripping and I think Paget Brewster is kind of fantastic. She’s Birdgirl! And on this show, capable and badass but still totally warm! And I identify with her anyway because she’s approximately my physical type!

The other characters are also interesting and have (no, really) proper character arcs. The show GOT BETTER after the main and mainstay character left and was replaced. It has Joe Mantegna in, who I enjoy partly for his role in Airheads and partly because his name is so fun to say. Like a vocal jigsaw.

Anyway. My point is, I make a point to watch it even though it tends to upset me. And usually this is in a OH GOSH NO! way, not a “oh no, that’s so sad” way. Today was an “oh no, that’s so sad” episode! And then I watched Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which was all about particularly tragic, useless forms of social prejudice.. also very sad. The kinds of episodes where you just have to feel sorry for EVERYONE. I must say, it’s nice to have that kind of full-on sadness-for-perp every now and then. I can’t stand constant cynicism, it exasperates me. Plus, it is dishonest.

Those two are my favourite L&O coppas though. The guy who wears tartan ties and has white hair at the temples (the rest is reddish black?) and the lady with short hair and A MILLION FRECKLES. She’s just so fun! Her looks are COMPLETELY at odds with grim’n'grtty, it’s so helpful for my enjoyment of such a generally pessimistic-atmosphere’d show. She is sarcastic, too, I just like them both.

My business cards arrived today! I feel quite giddy with it. Today has just been a good day! My beloved had GOOD NEWS re: future employment. I am so pleased! And I have even been busy:

Not finished yet. Feathers on leather, one wing so far. Bad pictures because my parents took the camera on holiday with them! I think this shall become a pectoral.

Upon sorting out a bunch of my old packed-away things, I discovered a third of one of my A level art projects. I made three leather hoods that were about feeling really bad and the ways in which it is possible to hide it. This one is the hide-in-prettiness third. I wonder where the other two are?My head is called Hyacinth.

Part of this side is missing, there was something woven down the rim. I don’t remember what, but maybe I’ll re-vamp it?

I got a C for A level Art.

Thanks for the title, TV Tropes!

 Today I had one of those dawnings of realisation that are too small and ridiculous to be called epiphanies. ‘Hey.. maybe it was called that Arts and Crafts movement not because some of them did art and some did crafts.. but because the objects they made were at once both ART and CRAFTS!’ :O

How clever I am sometimes. Haha! I can’t believe I missed that for so long. The reason for my thoughts on the matter:

I started experimenting with dolls.. back in my foundation year, I think?My first effort was fully plush, then I moved to DAS clay with individual wire joints, then Fimo with wire armatures, then with thicker wire, then wire wrapped in fabric and padded, with the shaping details sewn in. This is my favourite way to work, so far. It’s especially satisfying because I hadn’t seen it done before I tried it. I’m sure there are other people working this way, obviously, but.. they didn’t help me! I’ve always been particular about that sort of thing. Except when I’m not.This hand is what I started today. before it’s been full-body investigations, but I’ve been straying from my plan to do the hands for the small dolls in Fimo. I wanted to practice on a large-scale before trying small wire and fabric hands. I also just recently started experimenting like so:Working into the plain white “skin” (which, by the way, is white simply because curtain lining tends to be plain bleached cotton and the only “fabric shop” I could find in the town I just moved away from was a curtain-remnant box in a department store) in coloured cotton to give more definition and decoration instead of just “sculpting” the form with monotone thread.The hand hasn’t had any skin applied yet due to my having no printless cotton, so you can see the vein. Hopefully it’ll show through when the hand is finished, like a real vein. I also have particular plans for the final embroidery of this piece.

 I really enjoy this form of sculpture. And look, I even started teaching my sister:Smart, right?